


Settling

by trollmela



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alpha Steve, Alpha Steve Rogers, Alpha Tony, Alpha Tony Stark, Alpha/Beta, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pack Dynamics, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2016-07-04
Packaged: 2018-07-20 03:17:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7388395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trollmela/pseuds/trollmela
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony’s high and fluctuating alpha ranking made him volatile; Steve had the low rating of a steady pack leader and needed an anchor after losing his previous war pack. The Avengers certainly wouldn’t be the easiest people to get to settle into a pack, but Steve could offer his potential second comfort at least.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Settling

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like I should warn for abusing the English language and drafting new definitions for words. I was feeling a particularly weird type of creativity.

“You reek,” Steve burst out before he could keep his mouth shut.

Tony flinched a bit at Steve’s unexpected appearance, then straightened up, a visible sign of an attempt to restrain his scent, which was pungent with stress and anger.

Steve was used to constant anger by now. Tony’s smell wasn’t as heavy as Bruce’s, which was always present; but Stark usually controlled his feelings, so when he did let go, it was bad.

Steve approached him slowly, carefully.

“You want me to draw some lines?” He offered.

Tony had let him do that once before, so although they hadn’t settled, there was a chance that Tony would let him comfort him. More often, Steve had learned, if Tony didn’t protest, it was an unspoken ‘yes’.

It would be better lying down and with full-on skin contact, but Steve knew he had to take this slow, and they weren’t that close yet. Tony ranked so high on the alpha scale, almost on the brink to beta, that volatile behavior was a given, and his stats fluctuating wasn’t helping exactly either. If Steve had needed any evidence of how high-strung Stark was, that would have tipped him off.

The wrist cuffs of Tony’s shirt were unbuttoned and the sleeves pulled back to his elbows. So Steve started touching him there, slowly tracing the muscles in Tony’s left arm first all the way up to his hard biceps, spending a few minutes on it before moving on to tracing the veins from his wrist upward. He gently tapped Tony’s knuckles and the back of his hand in a slow rhythm, always aware of the warm body inches away from his chest and the soothing pheromones he was giving off.

“Wanna breathe with me?”

Tony laughed derisively. “Shit, you gonna do the whole nine yards with me?”

“Yes,” Steve merely replied, phrasing his offer more like a statement, something he would do inevitably no matter how much Tony complained.

Tony didn’t say anything, but Steve had sensitive hearing, so he could tell when Tony started listening for Steve’s breaths and matching them with his own. Steve stepped closer then, right up against Tony’s back so he could hear – and feel – Steve breathe. Now he was also in the right position to use his other hand and mimic the strokes, the ‘lines’, with his right hand. Time to get out the big guns. He started knocking the hollows below Tony’s collarbone on both sides, alternating it with strokes.

It didn’t take long after that for Tony to relax. He allowed his head to fall forward onto his arms on top of the bar, and he shifted back into Steve’s body. His scent was faint now, so Steve lifted one hand to press on Tony’s neck. He grumbled a bit, but didn’t move away or protest. Modern people considered scent checking pretty invasive. Steve didn’t care much, and he would openly admit to playing the ‘old-fashioned army grunt’ card. He’d often checked the Howlies’ scents, but then again, they’d been _pack_.

He closed his eyes against the by now familiar pain of loss, still sharp but not like before where he’d gone boxing for _hours_ until his knuckles had bled more than his heart. He had a tight grip on his scent, but his breathing hitched, and of course Tony noticed that when Steve had, until now, been such a good example of an _even_ breather.

Now it was Stark’s turn to give off comfort scent, and Tony didn’t do that very often either, so Steve dropped his chin down on Tony’s shoulder and put his nose against Tony’s neck where the scent was strongest, allowing it to ground him while clenching his jaw against the urge to put his teeth into the back of Tony’s neck and stake a claim.

The older man reached back and put a hand on Steve’s thigh, another gesture to comfort him. Maybe Steve had been wrong to think that Tony would be the last to settle. The man was releasing a hint of arousal now, nothing concrete or urgent, more of an offer if Steve wanted it. Of course Stark would offer comfort sex.

“You’re thinking of them,” Tony stated.

“Yes.” Steve’s voice sounded like he had swallowed a pound of gravel, low and broken.

After SHIELD had picked him up in Kentucky, after Steve had roughed up a lot of guys in a bar fight and spent the next three days not getting out of his motel bed, Fury had told him then that if they had known that the Howlies were his pack, a war-forged one but still pack, they would have put him on a team more inclined to settle; not one like the Avengers, full of loners and old betrayal, but that had been after New York, and Steve had coldly refused to find another constellation.

It was the Avengers for him, or – at the beginning preferably – none.

Tony would flip to beta, of course, if Steve made him his second. It was a given with how close he was to the beta range already. Steve was in the low alpha range and steady as a rock since the serum; he’d been in the mid-range before, now he was a firm five to Stark’s 11 through 14. Stark had changed numbers three times in the last five years, and those were just the stats Steve had seen.

Romanoff and Barton ranked both a 17, beta enough to be stable but not high enough to let some alpha jerk them around. Bruce was a steady 13 now, not far from his previous beta status.

“You want us to settle into a pack, right?” Tony asked.

Steve supposed it was pretty obvious, if not from his scent then from his behavior.

“What do you think?”

He honestly wanted to know how likely Tony thought it was for the Avengers to settle into a pack.

Tony leant back, forcing Steve to lift his chin off and away from where it was warm. Their new position made it very obvious though that at some point Steve had reacted physically to his scent and was now sporting a boner that pressed firmly against Tony’s rear.

“Yeah, we could. Gonna take some patience though. Banner isn’t there yet. And have you thought about Thor and his girlfriend? And Rhodey and Pepper? I’m guessing you want the sexual aspect.”

As if to prove his point, he rubbed his backside against Steve’s groin until Steve, with a gasp, stopped him with a hand on his hip.

“I’m patient,” Steve said, voice much steadier now than earlier while caught up in memories. He knew he needed an anchor, but he’d been so wrong about Tony. He’d be the _first_ to settle, not the last. He was already positioning himself as second.

“I want an exclusive second,” Steve said, “not a poly constellation. Jane won’t be a problem. She can be a peripheral pack member. Same with Pepper, Rhodey and Happy, if they want. Or we integrate Rhodey into the pack completely; War Machine could be useful.”

“An exclusive second.” Stark tensed. “Who were you thinking of? Nat?”

“No. You.” Steve leant into Stark’s neck again and brushed his lips across the protruding bone of the top of his spine.

“Confident, aren’t we.”

“You’re no longer with Pepper, are you?” Steve knew, of course. Tony had mentioned it, not in so many words, but her scent on him had gotten fainter and fainter, too.

“Nope. But my record-“

“Doesn’t scare me. And I’m pretty sure you won’t think of anyone else once you’re mine anymore either.” Steve went back to tapping his shoulders to relax him. “Think about it. You’re fluctuating wildly, you probably always have. It’s stressful. As my second you’ll flip, but then you’ll stay in the beta range without all of those damn hormones.”

“And I’m no longer CEO anyway-“

“That’s bullshit, and you know it! You don’t need to be an alpha top dog to rein in the board and the shareholders! You’re a genius, the entire company depends on you, CEO and alpha or not.”

Tony nodded a bit. “If anything they’ll be relieved when I tone down the antics.”

“See? You’re seeing the positives.”

“I can think of a few positives.” Tony rubbed his rear again against Steve’s dick.

“Patience,” Steve reminded him. “You said it yourself, if we start settling too early, we might scare Banner off.”

“Come on, you can just mark me up a bit, jerk off on me-“

Steve could. But he wanted to wait, get the timing right, for all of them.

“Nope.”

He gripped Tony’s hips tightly again to still him, then stepped back, swiping his palms over Tony’s sides before letting go and watching him shiver against the sudden cold.

“Tease,” Tony said, turning around to face him finally, thighs spread and showing where his pants were tight against his erection.

“Nah, I’ll give it to you,” Steve denied with a soft smile. “Just wanna build up to it.”

Yeah, Steve would be going to his room and jerk off, imagining Tony’s hand instead of his own, Tony’s face when it was finally time for the two of them, and he’d come all over his hand. But he wanted that, he wanted to feel that anticipation and get really hot for it before they would ultimately come together.

“Think of me, hm?” was Steve’s parting shot. The smell of arousal in the air was getting heavier. It was time to go.


End file.
